18.4 oz. Rye sourdough starter ~ 100% starter (Take regular sourdough starter and start building a rye starter from it by feeding 6oz. of white starter with 1/2C of rye flour & same weight of warm water. Build until you have enough for 2-1/3C of starter. It should take you 2-3 days.)

In the bowl of your mixer combine the starter, warm milk, eggs and molasses. Use paddle to insure all liquids are combined. In a separate bowl combine the bread flour, instant yeast and salt. Start mixer on speed two and add flour until all is combined. Leave on speed two for 6-7 minutes. Dough should pull from sides of the bowl and be free from the bottom of the bowl. Dough should be soft but not sticky. If needed, add flour 1T at a time until dough no longer is sticky. Remove dough from mixer and shape into a ball. Then put it into a lightly oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. let sit until it doubles in size; about 60-90 minutes.

Remove risen dough and place on a lightly oil misted work surface. DO NOT PUNCH DOWN. Divide dough in half and stretch-fold the dough like you are folding a 3-fold letter. Using your finger tips, shape the folded dough into a square about 6" wide, then tightly roll the dough into the shape of a log. Pinch closed the seam as well and pinch & tuck the ends as well. Place in lightly oiled 9" bread pans and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to rise about 1-1/2 X, about 45 minutes. You can also make a free form loaf and place on a cornmeal dusted baking sheet. Cover and raise as above.

Preheat oven at 400F. Brush risen dough with egg wash and bake for 30 minutes. Internal bread temperature should be 195-210F. Immediately remove from pans to raised cooling racks. Let rest for 1 hour before slicing to eat. Wait until bread is room temperature (2-3 hours) before bagging and freezing.Bread will be good for 30 days in the freezer, or 5-7 days in sealed bag on your counter.

Thanks for the nice comments everyone. There IS only 25% rye in this recipe, and it is all in the starter. If you want a higher percentage of rye, by all means excahange it with the bread flour 1:1, but I would not recommend going over 1/3 unless you really like a hearty, stronger tasting rye. By staying with the 25% rye, you get a nice sandwich loaf with a soft crumb, but you can make it anything you want that your taste dictates.

What I did that the recipe does not call for, is that I refrigerated the dough overnight when I made it, so the first rise was a cold rise/fermentation. I wanted to pull some flavor from the bread flour, and this is a tried & true way of doing so (plus, I was tired from fishing on the boat all day. and just wanted to crash in my chair. LOL) The results were excellent.

I also have a two-day old no-knead dough that I just pulled from the fridge this morning, that I will turn into no-knead baguettes later today.

I'm relieved you found my gaff amusing rather than annoying. I apologize for my error and can only note that the clarification of your identities is something of a relief in that the merged JoeV/JoeVa has way too much talent for any one person.

Oy Joe, dziekuje! Been looking for a rye bread like yours. I have lived in a Polish community for 73 years and the Polish bakeries all closed about 6 yrs ago. Your bread looks just like what I have beeen missing. I have tried many recipes and have not found one that I liked but yours looks like a winner. I will be baking this with caraway seeds soon. Thanks again

I think I need to look up this JoeVa and learn a bit more about him. Maybe we an do a tag-team bread baking event. LOL

kutzeh, I am Slovenian, not Polish, but I enjoy much of their cuisine. Eastern European cooking is very similar, as well as teh bakery that they all produce. I made this recipe for a challenge on another food website. They draw an ingredient and a nationality, and this week was "yeast" and Polish." I did some digging and got this recipe from a Polish friend, I actually took some to her, and she said it was as good as her grandmother's bread. I was humbled by that compliment.

I thought you might be from the spelling of your last name. We had many Slovenians in the community along with a church also 2 Polish churches and 1 Russian. The foods were mixed and matched and all yummy and full of cholesterol.The breads and desserts were great.

The community has thinned out as the college educated children have left for better jobs. Only 1 Polish church out of 3 in the city remains. All other have closed. The local bakeries gave in to the supermarket bakeries and the wonderful old world breads have disappeared. Time marches on.

I looked at some of Giovani's breads, and I'm impressed by his talent. For a young man (based on his picture) he's doing some amazing work, and I'm impressed by his results. What we have in common is our desire to produce the best bread we can with the resources we have available. To be confused with Giovani is quite a compliment, IMHO.

In a recipe like this(that uses a healthy dose of yeast), is it necessary for the sourdough starter to be all that vibrant?

I've been starting a rye(actually separate rye, ww, and white starters) for about 3 weeks, and have been saving the discards(separately, accumulating at about 2 oz/day) in the fridge.

I've never used the rye discard, but the ww and the white discards have always raised(quite nicely) any other "starters" I have made and used in yeasted recipes. In this case, I have about 12 oz of rye discard. Probably, by the time I get around to trying this recipe, I'll have 18 oz rye discard. Wonder if I can just juse that?

As long as the discards are producing new starters for you, I would give it a shot.Just watch your hydration, as you may need some additional liquid if your discards are not 100%. This is a slightly sticky dough, but you can adjust to meet your needs.

With a sourdough I don't usually use any commercial yeast, and just tough-out the additional rise times. In this case, it was a recipe from someone else (with permission to share it), and I like to make a new recipe just as it is written for the first time. Next time I will use the rye starter alone, since it's very vibrant after the buildup.

As a total newbie, I'm not competent to address percentages, but here are photos of my first rye loaves. I used 2 cups stone ground rye and 2 cups bread flour, and as JoeV mentioned, the result is hearty, though moist and tasty. The crust The crust had a glaze of egg white, and was rubbed with butter while still hot.

Thanks for your kind comment. It will encourage me to keep working. I made two loaves of Milwaukee Rye that were lighter in texture and really pretty to look at! Your instructions for building the rye starter were excellent, and that was used for all my rye lkaves so far, and some is ensconced in the frige for the weekend. It wiill be awhile, I thing, until something as lovely as your beautiful Polish Sourdough comes out of my oven!

All things in their time. My bread got nicer and nicer as I continued to practice, ask questions, watch online videos and continue to experiment. My biggest breakthrough, across the board, came after buying and reading Peter Reinhart's "The Bread Baker's Apprentice." With that book I came to understand the 12 steps in bread making, and to begin to understand some of the science behind bread making. Finding high quality materials to work with also play an integral role in the final product.

Here was one of my my most abysmall efforts at making sandwich and hot dog rolls. It was here that I learnd that you have to lightly oil plastic wrap (cooking spray) when you cover your rolls ...

So you can see that success comes from learning from your mistakes. LOL

Oh, patience! An ingredient I need in greater quantity. Mistakes I have in great quantity, but you and our friends on this site help to sort them out, define the origin, and overcome the resulting disappointment, so that I can continue to learn.

It's been three months since I made this great bread,so I started building the starter since Wednesday, and made the bread when I got back from a gun show I attended. I also made a recipe of Honey Whole Wheat (on the left). I decided to do them in loaf pans for sandwiches. Sure smells good in here.

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